Star Citizen's Patch 1.1 Is Live With New Ships, Controls, And More

Roberts Space Industries and Cloud Imperium Games have been on a roll when it comes to pumping out new content for Star Citizen on a regular basis. Backers definitely get to experience lots of new content, upgrades and optimizations frequently. This rings especially true now that patch 1.1 has just gone live with new ships and game upgrades.

Over on the Roberts Space Industries website the news dropped that patch 1.1 is live. What do backers gain access to in the latest patch? Well, as quickly summed up on the site, it's stated...

“Star Citizen 1.1 includes the launch of a number of new systems. Some, like the 64-bit conversion, are entirely ‘under the hood,’ while others are available for use today. The game now includes a new character rig, with smoother and better animations. The new dynamic damage system has been launched with the Gladius, and will eventually be applied to all old and new ships. Arena Commander also now features a landing system (detailed below), a new Mounts system with the introduction of Gimbal Mounts to the store and, likely most interesting for today’s pilot, the launch of the REC system.”

A couple of things before discussing some of the other features of the update: Star Citizen's new damage system is procedural. It's exactly what every space sim fan could possibly want out of a near-realistic damage module that not only shows alpha-blended parallax texture damage (so without the actual ship model being geometrically affected, it still looks as if the ship is taking some serious damage based on the manipulation of the textures) but there's also the included bonus of ships being able to break apart from positional damage.

The Aegis Retaliator and the Aegis Gladius have also both launched and are available for real-life coin for those interested in backing the game and gaining access to a sexy new spacecraft.

Star Citizen's Retaliator and Gladius come in two packages: a standalone and a bundle package.

The standalone package just includes the ship, some insurance and a hangar to store the ship. The bundle package contains 10,000 game in-game credits, an industrial hangar, six months worth of ship insurance, manuals, a soundtrack, behind-the-scenes featurettes, a download for Star Citizen and beta access.

Given that the standalone is worth $275 for the Aegis Retaliar and $90 for the Aegis Gladius, yet the bundle packages are worth $300 and $105 respectively, it's kind of hard to see why anyone would stick with the standalone package when you could get a bunch of other stuff with the bundle for $25 more in the case of the Retaliator and $15 more in the case of the Gladius?

Anyway, these ships will also be available to those who did not pledge for them with real life coin. The new REC system mentioned above will enable players to earn in-game credits by completing objectives and playing with the Arena Commander mode. After earning enough credits, players will be able to rent various in-game ships and equipment that are available for up to seven days. It helps give gamers a taste of what's to come.

You can learn more about the new REC system, the new automated and manual landing systems for the ships and details on the new ships available for those who pledge a hefty sum of money by paying a visit to the official website.